In an example conventional computing arrangement, a client and a server include respective network interface controllers (NICs) or network (NW) input/output (I/O) devices that are capable of communicating with each other using a Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) protocol. The server includes a host processor that executes the server's operating system and associated drivers. The server may also include a storage controller that manages access to storage maintained at or by the server. The client's NW I/O device issues requests to the server's NW I/O device to write data to and read data from the storage maintained by the server. The server's operating system, associated drivers, and host processor process the requests received by the server's NW I/O device, and issues corresponding requests to the storage controller. The storage controller receives and executes these corresponding requests. After executing the corresponding requests, the storage controller issues request completion information (and associated data if data has been read from the storage) to the server's operating system and associated drivers. From this, the server's operating system, associated drivers, and host processor generate corresponding request completion information and associated data, and issue the corresponding request completion information and associated data to the server's NW I/O device. The server's NW I/O device then issues the corresponding request completion information and associated data to the client's NW I/O device.
Thus, in the foregoing conventional arrangement, the server's operating system, associated drivers, and host processor process requests received by the server's NW I/O device, and the completion information and data from the storage. This may consume substantial amounts of operating system and host processor processing bandwidth. It may also increase the amount of energy consumed and heat dissipated by the host processor. Furthermore, it may increase the latency involved in processing the requests issued by the client's NW I/O device.